


amongst all creatures wild and tame

by handschuhmaus



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Domestic Fluff, Multi, Self-Indulgent, Short Road Trips, Sith prog rock trash
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-25
Updated: 2019-10-25
Packaged: 2020-11-07 16:53:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 670
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20820638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/handschuhmaus/pseuds/handschuhmaus
Summary: Visits of chosen family, rather than the unpleasant ones they are encumbered with by blood.





	amongst all creatures wild and tame

**Author's Note:**

> The title comes from The Mountain Goats' "How to Embrace a Swamp Creature" (and is also a biblical reference)
> 
> I read "The Dogs of War" in the Dooku tag and made a rare foray into Qui/Obi in "Caffeinated Consciousness", where a minor detail reminded me of this AU I've had for a long, long while (almost definitely 2014) but never written something to post before. So I ...decided to write a few episodes in this life. Compared with the instigation, it's long-married-with-kids and intensely Midwestern, especially Michigan (plus a bit of mostly Ohio)

They make an odd picture, probably, an hour and a half from breakfast at one home and now they're on the beach, which naturally--it's a cloudy Tuesday and October and the forecast breaking an unseasonable 70 in the afternoon is looking optimistic--is mostly abandoned. But why not revel in the luxury of a day off at the beach, even if a starker, more pensive one than in the popular idiom? Even though it's Huron they're looking at, it's "--Superior sings, in the rooms of her ice water mansion" and "Superior they said, never gives up her dead, as the skies of November turn gloomy" that comes to mind.

The children don't seem to mind that it's cool, except when they get near the water, wave crests crashing against the beach. Their shoes are off (well, the teenager's aren't) and the sand is probably fairly cool, what with the chilly breeze coming off the choppy water. The sand could get annoying, really; it seems Anakin is right about it getting everywhere, including into his shoes.

All in all he isn't quite sure what to _do_ here, though, inasmuch as he's gotten the impression most people usually take to activities at the beach that aren't walking along the water, and letting the tempest made into a sea and the lake breeze fill up one's senses. (Watching the children, to whom part in a new environment comes quite naturally _is_ obvious, but not part of the picture.

Then again, when do you go to the beach, if you're uninterested-in-traditional-marriage, times two, one of whom wanted a kid, one wasn't particular, fifteen years ago, and the former's live-in family friend who is also, as of last year, the latter's husband, because he apparently has an appetite for scandalizing the more conservative neighbors, even if not to the extent of excessive "PDA"... plus the implied teenager, and the IVF triplets of whom one obviously takes after the redhead, and two _probably_ are genetically connected with his husband...?

Palpatine removed his shoes, even though the sand was decidedly cool beneath the surface. Sandy shoes seemed like a significant impediment to understanding the lure of the beach

* * *

"Apples!" exclaims Quinn, who has seen an apple shaped sign, and refused to eat much breakfast this morning (thanks, apparently, to excitement, and per Yan, unusual). She grabs his hand and points to the billboard giving the exit number.

"Sadly that exit is closed, Munchkin" Yan said after a moment, looking at his phone. 

"Next open farm market added to the agenda," Tura reports from the driver's seat.

"Well, there's not much point in being around here in fall without enjoying local ...produce," Yan says, as if he has to justify this indulgence to his (practically speaking, their) husband.

"No, indeed," he agrees, and pats Quinn's small hand, surveying the other two toddlers.

Except that said next opportunity is having a festival far busier than they collectively care to take a party of seven through, and the small bridge to access the only other option before their next stop is out.

"Ah, well, I know one on the other side of this town," Tura says at that sign, and they're obliged to settle in for a few more minutes...

* * *

"You can take the front seat for a while," Tura says to him in a rare lull from the children's sporadic narration of the countryside, when they've taken the exit to stop at the next-town-over shopping center, and it's sprinkling. 

"Well, I could drive--" he says and Yan is searching through the binder of CDs, and putting one in--as if in revenge for earlier, he skips tracks without letting them hear what he's put in, and then familiar chords come on. 

"'Iron clad feather feet, pounding the dust, an October's day, towards evening--'" he sings, and carries on except that Tura cuts off the song before the first refrain.

"Who's pushing the stroller?" Tanger, their teenager asks, and he volunteers. Not as if he does it much, usually.

**Author's Note:**

> <strike>ok part of this is also related to the Michigan/former New Jersey resident describing the allure of [Coruscant] beaches in the Black Fleet Crisis trilogy (EU novels from the 90s with one excellent subplot, one decent, and one meh) in a way that confused me. But then if possible (I am...a few hours away from the state) I will go to (Great Lakes) beaches on days like here, while tropical beaches sound way too warm so's... </strike>


End file.
